Where France and China Agree

...COMMON FRUSTRATIONS, COMMON MANEUVERS Where France and China Agree By Ronald Steel To A jittery Washington with one eye on the November elections and the other obsessively fixed on Paris, Charles de Gaulle's recognition of China and his call for the neutralization of Southeast Asia seems a double blow below the belt...

...His call for the neutralization of Indochina under international guarantees by the great powers is thus an attempt to persuade the U.S...

...While doing its best to reinforce its own position, France has also taken advantage of America's present position by exercising its influence in various parts of the world...

...With the United States as China's chief adversary in Asia and the undeclared supporter of Moscow in the dispute which has split open the world Communist movement, the Chinese have turned to Europe for machinery and technical assistance...

...Not only does it question America's ability to speak for the interests of the West as a whole, but it comes at a time when the Administration is floundering with quiet ineptitude in the choppy seas of foreign policy...

...Recognizing American protection as essential so long as Europe was unable to defend itself, he never masked his belief that this was politically undesirable, and indeed subversive of Europe's separate identity...

...to speak for the West...

...Drawing upon the experience of France's futile 8-year war in Indochina, de Gaulle is convinced that the American intervention in Vietnam is doomed to failure and humiliation...

...In exchanging ambassadors with Peking, de Gaulle is not so much trying to embarrass Washington as to do something about the disintegrating Western position in Asia...

...As Peking has become the black demon of heresy to the Marxist priests in the Kremlin, so Paris is the archvillain of the State Department's frustrated "grand design...

...Quite correctly they interpreted the treaty as the first tentative step toward a Russo-American agreement to settle the cold war...

...But if it is willing to strike an agreement with him for a negotiated settlement in Southeast Asia, it will have greatly enhanced Gaullist prestige not only in Western Europe but in Moscow as well...

...Through these ideological lenses, all questions of national interest and national identity are subsidiary to the overriding question of political belief...

...The death of President Kennedy and the timemarking vacillation of the Johnson Administration have only reinforced his skepticism of the ability of the U.S...

...His triumphant visit to Mexico and his coming tour of Latin America are the first steps in a comprehensive plan to restore European influence throughout the uncommitted world...

...In the present conflict between Moscow and Peking, de Gaulle sees another rare opportunity to take advantage of Communist internecine strife which America's obsession with ideology prevents it from acting upon...

...Nor is the China Lobby...

...While de Gaulle has no enthusiasm for a Chinese atomic bomb, the test-ban treaty marked a serious setback to his attempts to negotiate with Moscow on behalf of a European confederation directed from Paris...

...Should Washington prove incapable of striking an accord with Moscow over the future of Europe, de Gaulle is making it clear to the Russians that they must logically turn to Paris...

...China must be involved in any such discussions because, as de Gaulle explained in his January 31 press Conference: "There is no political reality in Asia . . . which does not interest or touch China...

...a state older than history . . ." as de Gaulle observed in his press conference...

...But for the time being that door remains shut, and Gaullist diplomacy, like steam in a kettle, must seek another outlet if it is not to explode from its own self-generated tension...

...The rigidity of U.S...

...Faced with the new detente between America and Russia, de Gaulle has been forced to seek in the East the leverage he is temporarily denied in the West...

...Both seek to emerge from the shadow of their powerful protectors, to set up rival sources of power within their spheres of interest, and to rally the great mass of uncommitted peoples behind their leadership...

...De Gaulle's resentment of American overlordship of the West has been reinforced by his dissatisfaction with the calibre and objectives of American diplomacy...

...By restoring ties with Peking de Gaulle is merely demonstrating his long-held belief that nations act in terms of their national interest and not in terms of their ideologies...

...In China's defiance of the Kremlin, de Gaulle has seen not only a confirmation of his theory of history, but a reflection of his own desire to shake Europe loose from American direction...

...The present detente thus stimulates their anxieties even while it encourages their independent maneuvers...

...follow suit nine years later...

...Unable any longer to speak even for its allies, let alone for the neutrals, Washington is developing all the usual signs of paranoia when confronted by the agile impertinence of Gaullist diplomacy...

...While we have taken NATO for granted, and with it America's dominance in the West, de Gaulle has always viewed this as a temporary and unfortunate condition decreed by Europe's own weakness —a condition which he sought to rectify at the earliest opportunity...

...By acting upon the fact that Chiang Kaishek's army of aging generals is unlikely ever to set foot on the mainland, he was simply following the path Britain staked out more than a decade ago...

...Badly shaken by the Cuban showdown, the Kremlin pr;ferrcd to come to terms with Washington rather than with Paris...

...As far as the quest for the untapped markets of the East is concerned, de Gaulle knows perfectly well that the West Germans will remain China's favored trading partner even though it will be a long time before the Bonn government dares recognize Peking...

...Recognizing that the continuation of the conflict in Indochina can only further erode the West's position as uncommitted nations come increasingly to see the struggle as one between native rebels and white "imperialists," de Gaulle has taken it upon himself to open the dialogue with Peking that the U.S., for reasons of domestic politics, is unable itself to undertake...

...a vast country geographically compact but without unity...

...Faced with the possibility of a settlement between America and Russia, they see diplomatic independence as the only way of protecting their national interests...

...From his view, Washington's pursuit of a hopeless war in Vietnam, its preoccupation with Cuba and its inability to act upon the revolution now sweeping the churning tiers monde, is the final confirmation of his belief that Europe must have an independent diplomacy...

...Although spurred by different ambitions, the Chinese have been no less determined to declare their own freedom of maneuver...

...It is simply a useful platform for both in their struggles against allies and adversaries...

...Peking cannot offer Paris the power de Gaulle needs to rally Europe behind him...

...to accept a neutral Vietnam just as it has already accepted the neutrality of Laos and Cambodia...

...And it is ultimately the respect of Moscow that de Gaulle must gain if he is ever to achieve his great vision of a Europe stretching from "the Atlantic to the Urals...

...The Arabs, the Slavs, the Saxons, the Latins— these are peoples whose cultural identity and historical cohesion override the internecine combats in which they have perpetually engaged...

...Considering that France and China are the only aspiring nuclear powers, it is small wonder that they refused to sign it, for they were the only ones to suffer from it...

...Among such peoples, too, are the Chinese...

...This attitude seems a terrible heresy to Washington, which sees the cold war as a cataclysmic struggle between "freedom" and "Communism" with the winner inheriting the entire world...

...Neither war nor peace is imaginable on mat continent without China's becoming implicated...

...Among their common frustrations, none has been greater than the nuclear test-ban treaty of 1963, which both France and China saw as a deliberate attempt to exclude them from the nuclear club...

...In the French atomic program, which he inherited from the Fourth Republic, de Gaulle found the instrument by which France—and by extension, Western Europe—could finally put an end to this embarrassing dependency on the United States...

...Political beliefs come and go —the passion of one generation is a tedious burden to the next—but peoples are eternal...

...Since the three nuclear powers have perfected their arsenals after having conducted all the tests they desired, they had good reason to keep others from entering the inner sanctum...

...But a recognition of Chinese identity did not prevent him from condemning the political system which its Communist leaders have imposed upon China: "As is always the case in the Communist system, that [economic development] which has been accomplished has brought terrible suffering among the people, an implacable constraint of the masses, immense waste and loss of goods, the crushing and decimation of innumeiable human values...

...It is in this context that France now directs its attention toward Asia, and in particular toward Southeast Asia, where the United States has suffered successive reverses in its policies of aggression and where France enjoys what has been called a 'traditional influence.' " While it rests upon a common desire to strike a foreign policy independent of Washington and Moscow, the rapprochement between Paris and Peking is one of convenience rather than of alliance...

...There they have found industrialists eager to tap the developing markets of the East, and indifferent to China's quarrels with America over Formosa and Vietnam...

...So long as Moscow is willing to deal only with Washington, France's ties with Peking are essential to demonstrate its diplomatic independence from the United States and to establish its credentials as a power with a predominant voice in world affairs...

...The Paris-Peking tie is thus neither particularly broad nor stable...

...Neither Paris nor London has been overly impressed by Washington's vows of eternal hostility to the Middle Kingdom, remembering that they received the same treatment in 1924 when they recognized the Soviet Union, only to have the U.S...

...While French businessmen have solidly supported the restoration of diplomatic ties with China, they cannot expect to oust the industrialists of the Ruhr from their entrenched position, and can only hope for a share in the benefits of increased Common Market trade with China...

...Recognizing that de Gaulle still does not hold the trump cards, the Russians chose to by-pass him and deal directly with the U.S...

...a great people, the most numerous of the earth...

...Politics, not economics or a desire to embarrass Washington, thus lies behind de Gaulle's new overture to China...

...Since a bourgeois Russia has now mellowed its militancy and is willing to ignore Marxist theology in defense of its own interest, Washington naturally takes Moscow's side in the great Communist schism...

...On the surface, then, Paris and Peking are following parallel courses...

...Convinced that there can be no military solution—least of all by a foreign white power—to what is a political problem, he sees neutrality as the only way of preventing the Communization of all Southeast Asia...

...Despite the State Department's embarrassed cries of outrage, there was nothing particularly daring in de Gaulle's decision to recognize the government in Peking...

...The determination of both France and China to gain the atomic weapons that their protectors refuse to provide them is simply the most striking parallel of their refusal to accept the infallibility of either Washington or Moscow...

...In condemning such an attempt to stabilize the arms race before they had developed their own arsenals, General de Gaulle and Mao tse-Tung were joined by Senator Goldwater and his friends, who no doubt had reasons of their own...

...Looking for political allies wherever they could find them, it was natural that they should see in de Gaulle the symbol of resistance to great-power domination —an ally in their own struggle for diplomatic independence, ignoring de Gaulle's hostility to Communism, they recognized certain affinities between French and Chinese policy...

...The restoration of diplomatic ties is both reasonable and eminently practical...

...This may be bad timing to an administration which prefers not to have the international boat rocked between now and November, but de Gaulle has his own problems, and the American election is not one of them...

...Two rising powers with common adversaries and no serious grievance between them, France and China are natural supporters of one another within the limited frame of their common ambitions...

...France, on the other hand, has a vital interest in retaining her "traditional influence" in Indochina as well as strengthening her cultural and economic ties to the other nations of Asia...

...As the Peking People's Daily explained in March: "France is now in sharp conflict with the United States...

...Thus it is absolutely inconceivable that without her participation there can be any accord on the eventual neutrality of Southeast Asia...

...His periodic overtures to Moscow, hints of a central European settlement, and veiled warnings of the "yellow peril" along the Sino-Soviet frontier all fell on deaf ears...

...For de Gaulle, however, the his tory of the world is the struggle of peoples, not the conflict of ideologies...

...Equipped with its own means of defense, Europe would be restored to full political independence, becoming once again one of the great world powers to which its economic strength, its political dynamism, and its cultural heritage entitled it...

...Since de Gaulle's accession to power six years ago, France has gradually come to represent for the United States what China is to Russia: a recalcitrant ally and an increasingly powerful political rival...

...In diplomacy, as in love, it appears best not to take vows of eternity too seriously...

...foreign policy has, to his mind, lost the West irretrievable opportunities to negotiate a favorable settlement when the Communists were weakened by internal disorders after the death of Stalin or during the 1956 uprisings in Poland and Hungary...

...China is basically indifferent to French policy in Europe except as it may make life difficult for America or Russia...

...One can admire the signing of the test-ban treaty while still recognizing it as an act of enlightened hypocrisy...

...Our conduct of the cold war, honorable if not always enlightened, has struck him as being often detrimental to European interests and to those of the West as a whole...

...Resisting Moscow's frenetic attempts to bring them to heel by ideological assaults and the refusal of economic aid, they have decided to cut themselves off from the Kremlin and seek elsewhere the help they need to industrialize their economy...

...Ronald Steel, a frequent contributor, is author of The End of Alliance, recently published by Viking...

...And to a Washington chained to an Asian policy it knows is futile, he has let it be known that the road to Peking now lies through Paris...

...By forging his own Asian policy, de Gaulle is determined to show Moscow that Washington alone no longer decides what Western interests shall be, and that the days of the American directorship are over...

...Eventually, as Europe constitutes itself as a power independent of American direction, he is convinced that the Russians will be forced to negotiate directly with the Europeans —and preferably with him as their spokesman...

...The rapprochement between Paris and Peking is thus not merely a diplomatic act based upon the power realities in Asia, but one dictated by the new political fluidity which has come into world affairs during the past few years and by the position of both nations within their rival systems of alliance...